American education is affected more by government spending than anything religious. The Creation Museum was built with private funds, so there's not much we can do about it. When the government decides to cut education spending in order to give more money to the military or whatever, then there aren't enough books or desks and other things that could improve education. The religious nuts have less impact than everyone might think.

(25-02-2013 08:31 PM)StorMFront Wrote: I am not an American, yet Id like to get American view points on this. Ive read on threads (here and other places) about education in your country. I am actually shocked in what some of Americans are actually being taught (elementary school and high school). You actually have states that require students to be informed of "controversy of evolution", or how does your country actually allow a Creation "museum" (that is allowed to state it as being true, and people actually believe it?).

The quality of education varies greatly in the US depending on what state you live in and what part of each state you live in. Some schools provide a great education rivaling the best in the world while others provide complete crap. You can't make an accurate blanket generalization about education in the US. This happens because education is controlled at the state level, not federal. So different states implement different educational systems. The amount of money allocated to schools varies by state and the specific curricula does too. Within a state, the quality of education varies as well due probably mostly to socioeconomic differences.

As for the creation museum, I'm curious, would you prefer it was banned? If so, it would obviously be ridiculous to ban creation museums specifically, so under what broader heading would you ban some organizations and not others?

Quote:I might come off as an ignorant asshole of your culture, but ....do you care what the rest of the world thinks? are your people so self adsorbed in your culture?

I see you have the stereotype of Americans down pat. We are a nation of many subcultures. Many people are born here and many are not. Those that are born here may have parents or grandparents who were not. Or their families may have lived here for many generations. Within the subcultures, people vary. There are sensitive ones, intelligent ones, rude ones, ignorant ones, funny ones, boring ones, ... just like every other country.

Did I mention I hate overgeneralizations?

Quote:I just want to point this out that, America is number one in economic wealth but number 27 in the world in education. Yet, your number 1 in Western society as being the most religious, and the most anti science society in western society. I wonder if you can recover to what you were in the 1960s to 1990s?

Where's your proof of these statistics? "...the most anti science society in western society..." What does that even mean? And what nation can possibly be #1 in everything?

@DonaldTrump, Patriotism is not honoring your flag no matter what your country/leader does. It's doing whatever it takes to make your country the best it can be as long as its not violent.

I am an ex-Teacher. I hated the so-called "teaching" profession because I didn't actually teach as much as practice "Crowd Control". It really sucked.

Schools say they need Science teachers out the ass, but this is not really true. The only schools that really need science teachers are the ones who pay bad, or for which no one wants to work. In other words, all the open Science Teaching jobs pretty much suck.

After a couple of years, I realized a decent teaching slot was not going to open anytime soon in a school district near my home, so I quit and moved on. It was a great decision.

Nevertheless, even though I hated teaching, I did learn a lot about the profession. I learned what's right about the Education System, and what's wrong with the system. Most of all, I learned that the Education System is a system that few people understand. Just because most people have gone to school doesn't mean they really understand what was behind the experience - or how their schools are really managed. And...if you don't really understand the system, then you and your child can never get the best from it.

If any of you with kids have any questions about the system, I'll be glad to answer.

"The Northern and West/East coast part of the US are fairly innovative, liberal, well educated, wealthy, etc. and lead the world in every possible field that you could name."

I can't let this pass without comment. An attitude like this is very unhealthy. You need to pull your head in.

I begrudge no one a modicum of healthy patriotism, yet , just to "balance the books" you should realise in many ways America lags behind many other parts of the world...

- Your processed food is poisoning uninformed people throughout the world with Macdonalds, KFC and others springing up everywhere. The USA is the fattest country in the world (Australia and NZ run a close second). For the first time in the last century, children born now in the USA are not expected to live longer than their parents, despite probable developments in medicine, because so many people are eating rubbish.

-As best I can tell your health care system is second rate and very expensive.

- The CIA has a habit of sticking its nose in other country's business.

- America's behaviour in launching wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was immoral and contravened the United Nations directive. Then we can talk about Vietnam, South America, Iran and the list goes on.

- Your home grown cars are, as a whole, crap by world standards

- Your education levels, taken as a whole, are poor for a developed country.

- to suggest America leads the world in art, literature and music is just plain wrong.

- your legal system , as best I can tell, is heavily orientated towads lawyers making money, not fair play.

-Are you aware that Americans are sometimes portrayed as being loud, stupid and arrogant? Why are you doing your best to prove that assertion?

These are generalisations, and all countries, including mine (Australia), have faults.

People are often told they live in the best country in the world, which is just patriotic bullshit. It can lead to wars (for eg Nazi Germany, Bush in Iraq) and racism.

The reality is we are all one human family. Some parts of that family do some things better than others. There is no one branch of the family that does everything the best.

(25-02-2013 08:31 PM)StorMFront Wrote: I am not an American, yet Id like to get American view points on this. Ive read on threads (here and other places) about education in your country. I am actually shocked in what some of Americans are actually being taught (elementary school and high school). You actually have states that require students to be informed of "controversy of evolution", or how does your country actually allow a Creation "museum" (that is allowed to state it as being true, and people actually believe it?).

I might come off as an ignorant asshole of your culture, but ....do you care what the rest of the world things? are your people so self adsorbed in your culture?

I just want to point this out that, America is number one in economic wealth but number 27 in the world in education. Yet, your number 1 in Western society as being the most religious, and the most anti science society in western society. I wonder if you can recover to what you were in the 1960s to 1990s?

Just to clarify, Americans had reasons to be innovative and educated in the 1960s and 1990s (USSR is the biggest one). Im just wondering what is driving your society to be number one? It seems to be religious driving now...

Historically, the driving force of America's growth was the scientific and thus technological leap it made during the Cold War. At that time, science was heavily funded and NASA developed.

But at the same time, you have to understand that Americans were still strongly religious at this time. NASA was founded by a German scientist (because the Nazi rocket technology was so far ahead of its time).

Sociologically speaking, we can assume with some certainty that what happened was a lot of science done under America's name by people who were not American born. They provided the funding and the infrastructure but they did not provide the genius - that was foreign.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has pointed this out before. The greatest scientific contributions by America were not by American born people - they were by immigrants drawn to America by the promise of opportunity (to pursue science and technology). NDT makes the argument that by reducing its funding in science (NASA specifically), America will suffer greatly in the future. I agree with that point but it's not relevant here. What is relevant is that NDT pointed out a trend of new scientists going to Europe now instead of America because America slashed its funding and because the LHC is in Europe. Once upon a time, all the greatest facilities would have been exclusively in America.

What is driving it to be number one? You'll have to be more specific. Pride? Arrogance? Or do you mean physical contributions, such as science? Economic faith in America has taken a hit and with other emergent economies, FDIs into America will lessen.

What you've identified is an education gap - the loudest people in America are its idiots. The highly educated (few of which are American-born; i.e. not from immigrant descent) do not have enough impact on the country. Think about it, how is the Republican party still in the running? Because the votes of a million idiots outweigh the vote of one genius.

"The Northern and West/East coast part of the US are fairly innovative, liberal, well educated, wealthy, etc. and lead the world in every possible field that you could name."

I can't let this pass without comment. An attitude like this is very unhealthy. You need to pull your head in.

I begrudge no one a modicum of healthy patriotism, yet , just to "balance the books" you should realise in many ways America lags behind many other parts of the world...

- Your processed food is poisoning uninformed people throughout the world with Macdonalds, KFC and others springing up everywhere. The USA is the fattest country in the world (Australia and NZ run a close second). For the first time in the last century, children born now in the USA are not expected to live longer than their parents, despite probable developments in medicine, because so many people are eating rubbish.

-As best I can tell your health care system is second rate and very expensive.

- The CIA has a habit of sticking its nose in other country's business.

- America's behaviour in launching wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was immoral and contravened the United Nations directive. Then we can talk about Vietnam, South America, Iran and the list goes on.

- Your home grown cars are, as a whole, crap by world standards

- Your education levels, taken as a whole, are poor for a developed country.

- to suggest America leads the world in art, literature and music is just plain wrong.

- your legal system , as best I can tell, is heavily orientated towads lawyers making money, not fair play.

-Are you aware that Americans are sometimes portrayed as being loud, stupid and arrogant? Why are you doing your best to prove that assertion?

These are generalisations, and all countries, including mine (Australia), have faults.

People are often told they live in the best country in the world, which is just patriotic bullshit. It can lead to wars (for eg Nazi Germany, Bush in Iraq) and racism.

The reality is we are all one human family. Some parts of that family do some things better than others. There is no one branch of the family that does everything the best.

I know this wasn't addressed to me personally, but I wanted to reply anyway. I agree that the comment about the Northern and West/East coast was a stretch. And I also agree with some, but not all of what you said.

America does lag behind in some things. I think it's impossible for a country to be #1 in everything and, as an American, it doesn't bother me that we're not. (I know you weren't saying it should.)

The processed food that you mentioned isn't representative of our food. That is certainly the worst of our food. It's also probably the most marketed and franchised as far as restaurants are concerned so that's why it's what you see most internationally.

Our healthcare system is among the top in the world in terms of medical care itself. There are certainly other countries with equally excellent medical care as well. And yes, it's expensive if you don't have medical insurance. That's why Obama introduced the so-called Obamacare, but there was so much opposition to it that it didn't turn out the way he originally intended. It remains to be seen if the modified version that passed will be better than what we had before. Regardless, I think it's still far too expensive.

The CIA is doing what an intelligence agency should do. I understand why that would be offensive to other countries. Other countries also do the same to the US.

I personally completely agree about the wrongness of launching a war in Iraq without UN support. And there are many more people here who agree with me than you might realize. Of course there are plenty who also agree with President Bush too, but from outside the US, it may have seemed like everyone agreed with him. Afghanistan I think is another matter because that had more of a direct link with 9/11. We were personally attacked and UN support shouldn't be required for us to defend ourselves.

I totally agree that our cars are crap. In fact I don't drive one. It's because of our unions and the amount of money that goes into the associated expenses. It makes it nearly impossible to compete with world manufacturers that don't have those.

Our educational system really cannot be taken as a whole. It varies greatly by state and by regions within states. I suppose you could average out scores across the nation and maybe that's what you meant by "taken as a whole", but that really isn't an accurate representation of education in the US because the areas with terrible educational systems will drag down the ones that really are excellent. If we are lacking in an area, it's probably knowledge about other countries which I admit is somewhat egocentric.

Your comment about art, literature, and music seems accurate to me.

Our legal system does have problems, but to say it's all or mainly due to greedy lawyers really is not accurate and is a stereotype. Yes, we do have some greedy lawyers, but we also have plenty of good ones who care about doing the right thing. I think the biggest problem with our legal system has more to do with the appeals process and the length of time it all takes. But the matter is far too complicated to detail accurately here.

Quote:People are often told they live in the best country in the world, which is just patriotic bullshit. It can lead to wars (for eg Nazi Germany, Bush in Iraq) and racism.

The reality is we are all one human family. Some parts of that family do some things better than others. There is no one branch of the family that does everything the best.

Well said.

@DonaldTrump, Patriotism is not honoring your flag no matter what your country/leader does. It's doing whatever it takes to make your country the best it can be as long as its not violent.

(27-02-2013 04:18 AM)Sceptical Prophet Wrote: The highly educated (few of which are American-born; i.e. not from immigrant descent) do not have enough impact on the country.

I do have to wonder what you mean by this since, except for Native Americans Indians, everyone is of immigrant decent. So who exactly is American-born? I don't think you are saying that most of the highly educated and scientifically influential people were themselves born outside the US.

@DonaldTrump, Patriotism is not honoring your flag no matter what your country/leader does. It's doing whatever it takes to make your country the best it can be as long as its not violent.

American education is affected more by government spending than anything religious. The Creation Museum was built with private funds, so there's not much we can do about it. When the government decides to cut education spending in order to give more money to the military or whatever, then there aren't enough books or desks and other things that could improve education. The religious nuts have less impact than everyone might think.

Allow me to pontificate on this.

American education is affected by two things: those in power and money.

Those in power decide which textbooks are going to be used. Textbook publishers then tailor their books to each individual state, because they want the most sales (money). Textbooks for fifth grade math are published for Texas, California, Florida, even Arkansas because each state wants its own morality and its own features (monuments, sites, etc) featured in the books. Until very recently, each state had its own set of standards to which textbooks had to be written or sales would be zero. This led to massive discrepancies between student learning and made a huge mess of national standardized tests.

Thanks to "No Child Left Behind" we suddenly expected ALL students to reach certain goals on standardized tests. No matter if they had a true learning disability or didn't speak English, they must meet these goals. Teachers whose students did not reach these goals were censured, even fired. The states with the most --- [something, I can't find the right word] --- simply lowered their standards and let more kids "meet the goals." (See especially Florida and Texas.)

It's a game now. How can we get around the requirements? How can we force publishers to include/exclude X, Y, or Z? And these people making the decisions DO include a large number of the religious right. For publishers, it's a game of "Look, we put this in just for you, so buy our book!" They are so busy one-upping each other that they have totally forgotten the kids.

I bought some Girl Scout cookies the other day. It sincerely pained me that the approximately 9-year old had a major difficulty calculating change when I gave her a $20 bill for a $12 purchase.